Or "show up somehow in person". We have all of this physical infrastructure we could take advantage of for critical accounts: IDs, notaries, passports, post offices, etc.

There are accounts where that may not entirely make sense, but a lot of my accounts I would love the option to state "The only way to recover from a lost password is to send a notarized letter via snail mail explaining the problem."

No one but me should be able to touch my digital bank accounts without having to first show up at a bank location with my ID or a signed certificate of death.

"Immediate" password recovery is part of the problem. A lot of our accounts most people don't need to recover the password immediately, especially if the reason they have forgotten is that they haven't needed the service in months.

Also, phone calls and text messages aren't slow enough.